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Thursday, June 13, 2013

June 11th, Forty Years Ago.

On June 11, 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States declared that laws banning interracial marriages was unconstitutional. The landmark case, Loving vs Virginia, struck down the laws of Virginia and 16 other states that banned interracial marriages. It's really hard to believe that it was not that long ago racial bigotry, especially in the South was so strong. Just think, we now have a president whose mother was White and father was Black! But alas the bigotry and hatred is still here.

I can remember the loud opposition from the religious conservatives in the South. People saying that if the races were able to marry the next step would be people allowing to marry monkeys, an obvious racial statement from the time. Voices from the Bible Belt condemned interracial marriages as being against the Bible and the laws of God. Bob Jones University, the Christian college in South Carolina, which bases its teachings on the Bible, in 1998 stated
"Although there is no verse in the Bible that dogmatically says that races should not intermarry, the whole plan of God as he has dealt with races down through the ages indicates that interracial marriage is not best for man." I was so nice for the university to speak for God! Even today this bastion of Southern Christianity remains strongly opposed to interracial marriage as well as dating. People back then and even today say "god wants to keep the races pure". Why in the world would God create so many races and then want to keep them pure and separate? Why didn't he create just one race?

The truth of the matter is that the word "race" is not even mentioned in the Bible. In the Bible there were tribes, which probably referred to racial or ethnic groups, and there were warnings about marrying out of your tribe, but these were tribal or man made rules. Today some cultures and religions frown upon marrying someone of a different nationality, ethnicity or religion. The key word is "different". Back then marriages were not a bond of love, but a means of gaining power or property and had nothing to do with religion.

The arguments against interracial marriage were nothing more than a bunch of racists and bigots, under the guise of religion, cherry picking the Bible to find passages they could twist and turn and manipulate into the supposed word of God. They remind me of people who look to the prophecies of Nostradamus and prove that he was correct - well after an even had occurred and the prophecies were manipulated. What I find to be really strange is that these Bible thumpers don't realize that the Bible has gone through numerous translations and lost much of its original meaning. Most of our right wing Christian morons actually think the Bible was written in English, and American English at that.

Okay now 40 years later the world has not come to an end as a result of the legalization of interracial marriages and the religious nuts of the South has risen again to fight anew, this time against the legalization of same sex marriages. Sure some of these Christian bigots, say that the comparison cannot be made. But it's the same arguments, the same ignorance, the same Bible, the same hatred, the same racism and the same bigotry. I am sick and tired of these ignorant, narrow minded, intolerant, bigoted poor excuses for human beings thinking that they speak for God or Jesus Christ and using their religion to justify their hatred and shortcomings. Any day now the Supreme Court will announce their decision on DOMA and same sex marriages. Forty years ago SCOTUS made a historical decision in striking down bigotry and racism in interracial marriages. Let's hope the will make a similar decision in support of same sex marriages. For more information please refer o my earlier post called Marriage Equality and SCOTUS.